Hard-hit Bayswater drivers are petitioning to keep their 90 per cent discount on the congestion charge. People living within the Hyde Park ward of Westminster currently pay just 80p each day to drive around, as they live within the charging zone. But London mayor Boris Johnson plans to drop the western extension of the zone in 2010, meaning Bayswater drivers would have to pay the full £8 daily fee to cross Edgware Road into Marylebone.

How interesting. There's a petition, containing nearly 350 names, organised by the Oxford and Cambridge Squares Residents' Association and the Hyde Park Estate Residents' Association. They've handed it to their Assembly Member Kit Malthouse who said:

I fully support scrapping the western extension zone but clearly this case has thrown up an unfortunate anomaly which needs to be resolved. I have asked the Mayor to take a common sense approach and grant Hyde Park ward residents a discount.

That's all very well Kit, but one person's "common sense" is another's favouritism and this anomaly resolution business can be a slippery slope, you know. I wonder if there's still a tricky bit of mileage in the WEZ. Only this morning I was refreshing my memory about the procedures still to be gone through before Boris can finally - and half-reluctantly - get rid of it. TfL's website summarises as follows:

Transport for London (TfL) will progress the necessary statutory consultations that need to take place before any changes could be made to the scheme. This will involve a revision of the Mayor's Transport Strategy and a further statutory consultation on a variation to the Congestion Charging Scheme Order.

I've asked TfL for an update. Meanwhile, they've sent me a press release:

Transport for London today submitted its application for a new London Permit Scheme to the Department for Transport.

The permit scheme, which is also being submitted by 18 London boroughs, aims to regulate street works and would help to ensure that any company that wants to dig up London roads agrees to conditions and timing that limit the consequential disruption suffered by Londoners...

The scheme could be in place before the end of this year, and will ensure that street works are undertaken as quickly as possible and at the same time as other necessary works at the location, wherever practical.

Happy days. And further evidence, too, of Boris's seemingly splendid relationship with his Islington neighbour and fellow Crossrail enthusiast the transport secretary Lord Adonis. Good Lord, at this rate he'll be turning socialist.